


Undefinition

by doublejoint



Series: peachtober 2020 [23]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Friends With Benefits, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27177304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: Mayuzumi doesn't drive.
Relationships: Himuro Tatsuya/Mayuzumi Chihiro
Series: peachtober 2020 [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1953295
Kudos: 5





	Undefinition

**Author's Note:**

> #peachtober day 23: Glow

Mayuzumi doesn’t drive, but Himuro does. He still talks about going back home, like that’s something he’s really going to do, that he’ll drive down the clogged desert freeways all the time or something. With every month, that grows less and less likely; his lease renewal grows nearer, and so do the prospects of needing a real job after he finishes university. It’s a lot easier to get a job with a Japanese degree in Japan than in another country, but Mayuzumi doesn’t say that. He’s waiting for the right moment, to see how long Himuro drags out his self-denial.

It’s nice, though; for all that Mayuzumi relies on the buses and trains to get him where he wants to go, having Himuro to chauffeur him to an exact place is a luxury. He always does it, too; he doesn’t complain or take the bait about it that Mayuzumi leaves, probably because he’s smart enough to recognize it for what it is.

(The car also gives him an out for when Mayuzumi invites him in, for coffee or tea but that really means sex, and a few hours later, Himuro leaving, long after the subways have stopped running for the night. He feels the absence next to him in the bed, hears the creak of the front door, and then outside the shudder of the ignition. Mayuzumi would never do this, but if he were, hypothetically speaking, to get up and look out the window, he could see the glow of the taillights from Himuro’s Nissan and the glare off the dent on the bumper.)

It might be disinterest that keeps Himuro from staying. It might be too much interest; if this were a novel, it absolutely would be, but it’s all very mundane, an arrangement that they’ve fallen into without explicitly stating the rules until they’ve been codified, and at that point stating them out loud would shatter something. The problem is that they both lack a certain kind of open initiative; they’re too alike. Himuro’s not the refreshing kind of love interest to bring Mayuzumi’s hero out of his shell. Rather, they’re both secondary characters, and without a protagonist to revolve around, this relationship is aimless, suiting nothing except their whims.

Himuro drives them up north for a weekend in the rain, the windshield wipers off-beat from each other, catching up and falling out again. There might be a musical term for that, or perhaps it’s something Mayuzumi had made up in his head, or read in a misinformed blog post or a book by an author who couldn’t be bothered to do any research. Mibuchi would know, Mayuzumi thinks, suddenly. Mibuchi would get along with Himuro, playing the same kind of pretty passive-aggressive smile game--or going straight past that, if they both decided it wasn’t worth their time. 

He hasn’t had Mibuchi’s number in his last five phones. He hasn’t talked to Mibuchi since he retired from the basketball team, and they were never really friends--and even though he met Himuro through someone who knew someone else he went to high school with, he’s very much not still stuck in the past. This was just a stray thought, like the leaves stuck to the outer corners of the windshield where the wipers can’t reach. Mayuzumi adjusts the radio tuner; Himuro ignores it, until Mayuzumi lands on a classical channel, some orchestral piece he’s not familiar with. Himuro hums along, and Mayuzumi’s not sure if he’s just making it up or if he actually knows it, but he’s not going to ask.

All of this might be easier if he said something rather than tried to win by puzzling it out. Maybe.

“I could teach you to drive,” Himuro says, as they wait at a light.

The click of the turn signals and the out-of-sync flop of the windshield wipers goes horribly with the song on the radio and the rush of the rain. All of that, and it still feels too quiet, the silence heavy, like medicine balls on Mayuzumi’s shoulders.

“No thanks.”

The light changes to green. The car revs back to life. Mayuzumi leans against the window. His phone buzzes in his pocket, probably a notification from a mobile game he hasn’t played recently. Himuro leaves both hands on the wheel, and even if he’d dropped one down to the console Mayuzumi wouldn’t hold it. He’d just think about not doing it.

They haven’t done anything like this in weeks. They’d met up for drinks with some of Himuro’s school friends, who’d kept the inside jokes Mayuzumi doesn’t get to a surprising minimum, but it had been all too casual, Himuro taking the train back to his apartment in the opposite direction of Mayuzumi, no hands touching thighs or feet touching feet under the table, as if this had all been a delusion or a dream. 

Maybe it’ll hurt them both a little less if they keep it plausibly deniable, so that when this is over, when Mayuzumi still can’t drive and Himuro’s still here and they oh-so-carefully avoid each other’s haunts, that it will seem so far away, as if maybe it never happened at all. They’ll erase each other’s cell numbers and take out the trash from the last takeout they’d had together, and there will be no trace, like a book returned to the library, if slightly more dog-eared.

Maybe he does want to hold Himuro’s hand on the console. Maybe they should stay on this trip through Monday, despite classes and work shifts they’ll be missing. Maybe when all this is over, he’ll want to have something more concrete, even if it hurts. Or maybe, since Mayuzumi still won’t drive, since Himuro still hasn’t left, they’ll have more reasons to keep it going just a little longer, and a little longer still after that. He’ll take a suspense in the middle of somewhere over being nowhere anyway, paving the road with the tires of the car over being stranded at the side of the road.


End file.
